


Why Danny

by Alex_deMorra (Ergo_Sum)



Series: Fence Sitter [8]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Consent Triggers, Lingerie, M/M, Panic Attack, Study Group, emancipation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-02
Updated: 2016-11-02
Packaged: 2018-08-28 16:43:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 2
Words: 8,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8454040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ergo_Sum/pseuds/Alex_deMorra
Summary: Chapter 8: Fence SitterMicah's Ethics class has him in a study group with three people with different histories and views to his own. Issues of consent arise as part of a debate, and he has to find the means to stand up to this group even as he is being triggered by them.Later, he shares a new side of himself with Danny. Danny being Danny, doesn't disappoint.





	1. Chapter 1

It only took a year but this was the first time I had a reason to nab the coveted corner table at the coffee shop where Danny worked. It was one table away from the two-seater that I, and everyone else who worked here, called my table. Tonight, however, there were going to be four of us. Too many to crowd around my regular spot.

My settling in ritual was in motion. I put my jacket on the back of the chair, in the same way I always did, I plugged my computer into the same outlet, I angled myself the same way that I always did, I ordered a black coffee and received an indulgent, super-sugary, ultra-caffeinated, whipped-creamed-to-the-ceiling drink in return, I set up my notebook just so on the table and propped my bag so that it was sandwiched between my calf and the wood paneling that acted as the bottom half of the wall. It should have felt the same as normal but, even before the others arrived, it didn’t.

The perspective was all wrong.

My current position was no more than three feet away than where I spent countless hours. Yet, I was hyper aware of who came in the shop, of who went out the back, and of who stopped in the hallway to use one of the two toilets. Almost all of these people sought out my eyes as they entered or passed by and the one person’s eyes who I sought out several times an hour were only accessible if I contorted myself backward or stood up to get more water. 

The clink of coffee cups was louder, the sounds of generating steam edged towards piercing, I smelled grime from the street — or perhaps just by seeing it, the scent that had drilled itself wafted from my brain, through my nervous system, and into my nose to inform me that despite what molecules were actually in the air around me, I was meant to detect this one. Taken all together, it was like someone had taken a chip out of the nestled, cozy experience I had come to take for granted, which left a new piece of me both raw and exposed.

This study session needed to end so that things could get back to normal. And for that to happen, it had to start. For it to start, the other three people had to get here.

The first to arrive was Heather. I think her last name was Williams. No. Wilson. Or, maybe it was Woods?All I know is that it begins with a W. It was some name that I was supposed to have known because it was on a plaque outside one of the campus buildings. Since it wasn’t a building I frequented, I never remembered exactly. Also, plaques. Bad for teeth, bad for buildings, and since bad comes in quantities of three, it was probably best to keep my distance.

Ms. Whatever was dressed in a stretchy pink miniskirt, a pair of those tan sheepskin boots that, by terms and conditions of their purchase, had to be worn incessantly, and layers of graying pastel cotton shirts in sleeves of varying lengths, of which the longest ended abruptly at a tattooed blue and black bracelet of butterflies that wove around script that read _quid quid Latine dictum sit altum videtur_.

I was rapt upon my first sighting of the tattoo. Of the design, of the bold placement, of the meaning behind it. Without a doubt, I was thrilled to find someone so willing, and with such a deep appreciation for irony, to ink themselves — as in permanently — in a highly visible place — as in around a wrist that everyone sees unless wearing huge bracelets or driving gloves and, really, who does that — with a statement. A statement about a statement. What wasn’t to love?

Then when the statement itself was a straight up judgment about Latin phrases used for the purpose of sounding pompous, profound, erudite, educated, or ultimately to be as pretentious as fuck, rather than to their use an elegant and well-known phrase to communicate the timelessness of an idea? Classic.

The implication was, of course, not that their education was sub-par, but that they believed it to be, and had to act in some way to make up that gap without others knowing that they were doing so, not realizing, in fact, that they were being obvious about their perceived shortcoming and, therefore, blatantly advertising it to those around them.

It was exactly the kind of balls-out move I wished I were more capable of. So for a moment, I had been excited to find someone so confident in themselves, and their learning and — well, she must have been — so sure of her place in the world, to wear this small test of character that she could use on any new person that she met? I thought it was brash and totally brilliant. So much braver than I was and, therefore, immediately earned my esteem.

But.

Then, I learned that she understood the phrase to be a stamp of authenticity and, therefore, didn’t understand the meaning of the phrase at all, and — possibly I should be ashamed of this — I was too amused to be disappointed and too validated to feel bad about deliberately keeping her last name out of my memory.

Still, she seemed nice enough. Intelligent enough. Social, willing to compromise, easy to laugh. Enough, enough, enough. So much so that at the time we had chosen our group, Heather was the one I thought I’d have the easiest time to work with.

Now, I wasn’t so sure. Now, I had that feeling a waiter must get when several people from a large group wanted immediate attention to send something back to the kitchen or, perhaps, order more wine, not realizing they had singled out someone who was serving a totally different part of the restaurant and, because such attention is directed in that particular waiter’s direction, they must both change their route to address the table in question, go on a hunt for the person that can actually help them, and then make amends to the people waiting on them who should have had first service because that was the job at hand — all with aplomb and calm and tact.

In other words, she wanted something from me. I wasn’t going to deliver. She might become tenacious. I would become uncomfortable. Such is the role of discrimination between that which is willingly given and that which is not and how many people are affected when one person doesn’t think this universal rule applied to them.

_Can’t wait!_

Heather zeroed in on me instantly and wove through the crowd at the counter to arrive at our table. Her long brown hair was styled in waves and when she put her bag down so that it rested against the leg of my chair, she coyly tucked one long spiral of it behind her right ear as she said hello.

Then — in a move that was as subtle as accidentally biting down on a pebble — she leaned toward me with a twinkle in her eye and asked what was good, what did I have and, oh, did I mind if she tried it? Her hands were already wrapped around my cup before I was able to warn that I was feeling ill (not true, I was fine) and preferred not to share, I’m sure she understood, and yes, thanks for that.

While Heather took her place in line to order whatever it was that she was going to order, Brenda and Valentz came through the door. They continued their conversation even after they dropped their bags on the opposite side of the table as if they had met outside or, possibly — and my intuition said this was probably closer to the truth — arrived together. If I were right, and they were together, it would be a world-class triumph in the art of matchmaking odd couples.

At the time I met her, the first thing I noticed about Brenda Nguyen was the delicate gold cross worn on a chain that tucked underneath the collar of her perfectly pressed, close-fitting shirt. A shirt which was tucked neatly into a pair of belted chinos and whose sleeves were buttoned, not rolled. The second thing I noticed was the contentment that floated underneath the spectrum of expressions that crossed her face. It reminded me of the longstanding question I faced on whether it was possible for me to be friends with someone who apparently had a close relationship with God. Or a close relationship with an apparent God. Either way.

The thought of her being with Edward Valentz, a swaggering, confident guy, befriended by those in a special class of jock, frat-boy, and shit-sandwich-disguised-as-human. Here is a guy who did whatever he wanted to do just because he could. And he got away with it. And he didn’t care if you cared. Because he didn’t have to. Because he said so.

For those who gave him the benefit of the doubt, or those who simply believed that first impressions could be fallible, the way in which he referred to himself should have clinched it. Not because there was anything wrong with his name, so much as his insistence that he was addressed with his surname and not his given one. Or even a nickname. Or anything remotely approachable.

He was Valentz. Single name. Like Madonna or Cher.Valentz. Not Ed or Eddie or Edward. Valentz. And it wasn’t VALE-nz, like the electron. It was valENz. Like it started off as hardly a word, like the first syllable wasn’t really said as much as it was suggested and then it moved into a grunt. Like Oi! Hey! Yo! Valentz! It was a name that knuckle-walked, by its own volition, onto a pitch or into a board room.

Or onto my project.

The four of us were brainstorming topics for Society and Ethics. It was due in six weeks. It counted for half of our grade. Half. A grade of zero meant a failing grade for the class. A grade of fifty percent meant the most I would get was a C and that would be if I got one hundred percent in everything else. Plus, this was in my major, and the first class I would have with this professor, and I needed to make a good impression, and I had a scholarship that I had to keep. Forget about failure; mediocrity wasn’t an option either.

Unfortunately, neither was free will.

The group did not coalesce on its own. It coalesced for us and on our behalf. And it was all thanks to the power of our professor’s assistant, who caused me to question whether I had done anything that would have resulted in her grievance against me in the short time we had known each other.

Nothing came to mind.

Clashes between all of us were a foregone conclusion. I suspected my first would be with Valentz. I was correct. I hoped that it wouldn’t happen until later. I was wrong. Valenz and I butted heads within the first half-an-hour of our working together. On the first thing that we did as a group: Brainstorming. On the first topic that had traction: _Was it ethical to allow minors to have legal autonomy and, if so, under which conditions?_

Heather and I thought yes. Brenda and Valentz thought no. Yet each of us had vastly different thoughts on why we held the thoughts that we did. In an effort to provide a first-hand experience, I — like a dumbshit — defended my position by sharing my story. Valentz, predictably, had something to say about it, “Wait, so you’re saying that you just left him there?”

He meant my brother, who was fourteen when I was sixteen, who neither applied for nor did he get emancipated from his parents by the state. He did not go to foster care. He stayed with our family. And for several very good reasons. His situation was not mine.

“No, I mean it man,” he huffed, and demonstrated that he found my fraternal commitment lacking by waving his hands about with an energy and frequency that was reminiscent of a chest-pounding Silverback. He lowered his voice, as if everyone around us wouldn’t be able to hear him, and leaned forward, “You said that your life was in danger. So, if you were old enough to have legal autonomy, as you put it, you should have also had the responsibility for making sure that your younger — and, might I add — more vulnerable brother was also out of there.”

I was sorry that I brought it up. I have never questioned what I did. Ever. But people. Especially the ones with zero clues about what it was like to have that life at that age. That had no idea of what was required to remove myself from the actual situation or the help I needed to get through the emancipation process. Valenz, like so many others, acted like he had the right to question what I should have done differently, including the basic premise that it needed to be done.

It was like some weird instinct he was following.

The instinct I wanted to follow, mind you, involved several variations of advising him how, when, and where to fuck off. Be that as it may, since I was fairly certain that this project was as much about persisting through group animosity, I tried an instructional approach with him. “The fact that I went through the process meant that social services was involved. They came out and did a thorough inspection of Seth’s living situation. Everyone in the immediate family spoke with counselors in private. ”

“So, I might have left but before I did, but it wasn’t like he was on his own. Or like I left him to rot or get abused or abandoned.”

He interrupted me, “By your own admission, you abandoned him.”

“No. That isn’t true. The state had people research both his and my living conditions before a report was made. It also meant there was history in writing if Seth wanted or needed to pursue the same thing I did in the future. Besides, you shouldn’t be assuming that just because we lived under the same roof, the same conditions applied. They didn’t. Our lives were very different.”

“How can you say that? Dude, you left him. You were in the same house, he watched shit happen to you. Of course, he was going to be affected by that. And then, what was going to change without you there? What if it all transferred to him so then it was two people who got hurt and not just one. I call bullshit. I would never have left my brother. Never. Even if I had to deal with that kind of crap,” he spat, his opinion confirmed, his derogatory righteousness firmly in place. Did he know what this so-called _crap_ entailed? No. Yet that didn’t stop his decisive frown, and the rest of his disapproval, from spreading across the table and around the room so that even people at the far side of the shop turned their heads to find out what was going on with us.

Danny caught my eye and mouthed, “You okay?” I grimaced. Then, with hesitance, I nodded. I knew he’d pick up the _no but yeah but no_ meaning behind it.

Brenda shrank back from Valenz and gave him a nasty side eye with her arms folded protectively over her chest, her eyebrows pressed into her forehead to form uncomfortable looking creases, her lips, usually listed in an upward curve, were flat. In contrast, Heather leaned forward, her interest peaked, as if she were interested in meeting his challenge, and I had a feeling that, regardless of the outcome, she wanted to take him on. That said, it was clear that she didn’t agree with him.

The table, having so recently been split evenly, was more hostile and poisonous with three against one than it was before. It didn’t matter that I was one of the majority, I wanted to shut this discussion down. More than anything, I wanted out of this spotlight, even if I was the one who turned it on. These short few minutes were more than enough to recall my preference for not speaking up when an instance involved me personally.

Diversions are as good an alternate route as any other. So I tried one, “Guys, this one isn’t going to work. Let’s find another topic.”

Brenda disagreed, “I’m not sure I agree, Micah. We all have strong views on this topic and having this much dissent within our group is a strong indicator for how important others will find it. It provides a lot incentive for getting people to talk. I think a lot of people will find this relevant and, depending on how far we take it, there might be potential for creating real change.”

Heather chipped in, “I agree with Brenda. Of all the ideas on the table, this is the first one that all of us are passionate about. We’ve talked more about this than any of the others combined. And Micah, your story…”

“Absolutely not,” I cried, frustrated at the table's growing interest regarding a topic that needed to die a fast and painless death. “I’ve already been on trial once, I don’t want to do it again, and this story, of which you know very little, is not something that I’m going public with.”

Now I was defensive. Great.

But.

The table flipped. Not literally, just figuratively. The girls switched sides, and since the three of them were all in agreement, I became the odd one out.

Unless.

Valentz mumbled something that I didn’t catch. I set my eyes on his as a dare to repeat himself and hoped that our disagreement created enough disdain that he would press for us to move onto something else. But again, I was wrong. What came out wasn’t scorn for the topic but more scorn for me, “If you really believe that you did the right thing, you should be able to defend it. The situation wasn’t all about you and you acted like it was. My vote is to pursue this.”

I blurted, “No,” not quite seeing the three faces that I knew were still there. Then came a feeling that I hadn’t experienced in years. It started with a shortness of breath like I had just been running or something. Then, as if someone could unravel me as they might do for a sweater,I became numb. It started in my hands and moved up my arms, over my shoulders and down my back. Unravel, unravel, unravel.

“Micah,” Heather cooed, in what she doubtlessly considered a calming voice. Since she was using a calming voice, some part of her realized that she needed to use it. Which meant she could see that something was happening with me. Whereas a decent person would stop trying to get their way long enough to make sure the person they were conversing with was okay, she didn’t, “you of all people should know how powerful stories are. You should share. It might really affect someone’s life. Like what if there’s someone else in your situation, they would hear your story, and they would know they weren’t alone, and maybe it would cause them to encourage them to pursue something like you did. No really. Like what if we turned this into youth outreach? That would be great!”

I wasn’t sure what to process first.

The fact that Heather had turned this disagreement into an incredibly bad and, possibly, dangerous idea that would have both exposed me and invited discussion regarding something that people affected by would be sensitive to — never mind triggered by. Then, say we even got that far, none of us — and I include myself — had the capabilities of moderating such a discussion and to imply some level expertise where we had none, possibly giving someone a false sense of resource or hope. I could consider all of that.

Or.

Second choice.

I could focus on the growing possibility that I might die, right now, right here, at this table. Sitting on my hands didn’t stop them from shaking but the pressure on them gave me a sense of comfort.

Next, I got dizzy and, as much as I wanted to run out of the room, I knew that if tried to stand up, I might not remain there. It felt a little like I’d feel better if I could just go somewhere to quietly vomit. “Are you kidding me right now?” The three of them threw expectant gazes my way. They may have had different motives, but they all wanted the same thing from me. They weren’t going to get it. “No way. Offer up your own damn story.”

“Please reconsider. This is important,” said Brenda. “You should share how you were affected and talk about how your life changed before and after. Think about it, you have an experience not many people have access to and hearing your first person account, well, it could change a lot of minds and could make people think differently about children’s rights and victim’s rights. If I were in your shoes, I would consider it an honor to share. I really would.”

But she’s not in my shoes and, if she was, she would know that my shoes were pissed. Not many people knew the whole story and as it stands, there are three people too many. I admonished the group of them, “Are you telling me that not one of you understands the word _no_? Because I sure as hell said it and none of you are hearing it.”

“Oh, I know,” I added, in a snark that I didn’t know I had, “why not discuss the subtleties of consent and, more specifically, about the ethics of appropriating other people’s experiences for the _greater good_?”

At with that, I was overwhelmed and mentally checked out. “Excuse me for a minute,” I said and caught a look of disbelief from two out of three table mates, which I ignored. Then I stood and snagged my phone and wallet, and left the rest of my things on the table while I disappeared out the employee entrance to get some air on the seldom-used patio.

The wall behind me was cool and solid against my back; the rough face of its concrete bricks dug into pockets of tightly contracted muscles pockets and poked at them as if reminding them it was okay to let go. I let myself be held there, supported, and with my eyes closed. In no time at all, Danny was there. He showed up right in front of me.

Before he could say a word, I pulled him close to smell and taste and feel him and to learn again how his form matched up to mine. He was warm. Like me, he was perspiring, but his was tangy from hard work and mine sour with panic. His breath was hot and thick from the espresso he shot when I passed him to come out here. He was so many things to me but right now he was the source, the nutrient, the door to pass through, to aid in my recovery.

“I wish we were home night now, Danny. God, I would…” I kissed him.

No, not kissed.

Imbibed. 

Inhaled.

Consumed.

All of this, all of him, this is what calmed me.

The breeze he created licked the skin above my upper lip and it made a sound, not unlike a hiss. The feeling started to come back down my arms and into my hands. The first thing they felt was his hair, damp near his scalp and silky elsewhere, like swimming through feathers.

My response to him has always been visceral. I can think about how big the night is, or how unfair the world, but, in terms of what astounds me, neither compares to the transitions between the places he is soft and the places he is hard, and of how he can sometimes be strong enough for both of us when I just…can’t. And he gives it so freely. This space and safety. In minutes, I have hidden away forever.

We’re still up against the wall. I’m angled in one direction against it, and in another since I’ve parted my legs so that he can stand upright and against me. When we stand exactly like this, we are the same height. But we aligned differently. His belly button was an inch or so above mine. His arms rested comfortably over my shoulders. He’s hard and soft and hard and soft. His back, his lips, his ass, his heart. I didn’t want to be here anymore but only because I wanted to be elsewhere. Alone. With Danny.

The door to my right squeaked and a yellow streak of light swept across Danny’s face. Neither of us looked over as the door creaked a second time; it took the illumination with it. We shouldn’t be doing this here; not where he works.

“How much longer until you’re off?”

He smiled with my tongue held between his teeth, “Keep this up and it’ll only be another minute or two,” 

If I could smile — and I was — then, I was definitely feeling better. “Fucker,” I said. It was a joke but it sounded more like relief. “That’s not what I meant.”

“I’m done at ten.”

That meant he wasn’t closing tonight. I already knew that but it felt better to hear him say it. We could be home in less than two hours.

“I need to head back to the counter. Are you okay?”

“Yeah. It was stupid shit. I got triggered by the group but I think it’s cool now.’

He gave me one last kiss and looked over his shoulder with a cute smirk as he passed through the door. I remained for another few minutes of solitude before I returned to the table.

Anything could have happened.

One scene included Valentz who started up again when I got back, “For real? You’re not going to stand up like a man on this one?” Then I’d tell him to fuck off, for real this time, and Brenda would gasp, “Language!” as if that were the real issue.

Another scene included the three of them already gone, possibly with a note that we’d pick up our conversation after our next class.

A third was the three of them figuring out how they would try to convince me — maybe more nicely or maybe not — how to go alone with them.

What actually happened was that Brenda had taken over in my absence. She spoke as soon as she saw me, “Micah, we can talk through this. Are you okay?”

My fight or flight mechanism returned, heavily favored (as it always is) toward the latter. I pictured my counselor telling me to  _use your words, Micah. Use your words._ So I did. “Yeah, I’m okay. I haven’t changed my mind, though. You were trying to get me to share my personal story. It’s too much. I can’t do it, guys. I won’t.”

Brenda and Heather threw over a pair of pinched smiles, while Valentz scanned me critically and, after a hesitation that seemed to last for ages, he shrugged his shoulders in approval as if it were up to him or as if I needed it. I didn’t. But it was nice to have the acknowledgment.

The unease dissipated, slowly at first and then it gained momentum. As it left us, we picked up speed, we freed up ideas, we found consensus. I might have said it out of anger but it appeared as though my comment about consent and appropriation was another hot button for the group. One we all had personal stories about. On both sides. Over the next hour, we mapped out a thesis, assigned tasks, and wrapped up our session for the night.

We left in exactly the opposite order in which we arrived. Valenz and Brenda went first. He subtly placed his palm on her lower back as he opened the door and I caught a look from her to him. A flirty one. One that was generously mixed with her approval. One that he preened in. And just like how a puzzle piece fits together just _so_ , the two of them made sense.

Heather looked onto the couple with a longing the second that she looked back to me, and perked up. “So,” she said, it was a single syllable elongated as if to extend our time together in a similar way.

I eyed the table behind me. My table. It was free. My hands transferred my things before I was aware of the thought. A book. A notebook. A laptop. One by one they went, each next item brought me closer to normal. “Yeah, I’ve got about another thirty minutes.”

Heather suggested, “I could stay and study with you.” She picked up a few of her things to move them; mentally she was rearranging what I had set on the table. Was this a game or was she obtuse?

Once again, I appreciated the view from my comfort zone. He was gorgeous, even if he was standing with his back more stiff than usual, and even though it was obvious that he was trying not to look over. I kept my eyes on him and responded to her, “That’s Danny’s seat. It’s taken.”

“Who is Danny?”

“My boyfriend. This is our table. This is my seat. That is his seat. It’s kind of our thing.”

“But he’s not here.”

“Yeah, he is.” I caught his attention and waved. He waved back. Heather’s eyebrows knitted, her mouth wrenched, and she was about to protest before she thought better of it, perked up, smirked, packed her things and, with a brief goodbye, she walked away.


	2. Chapter 2

Danny held onto my hand all the way home. He grabbed it even before we left the coffee shop and didn’t let go the entire time that we walked up hill, through the gate, past the star jasmine that wouldn’t bloom for another two or three months, up the stairs that really need to be painted, and pulled me inside after he unlocked the front door to let us in and before he locked it again to keep everyone else out. I hadn’t had a panic attack for a long time. It was true that each one left me exhausted. But, really, I was really okay. He didn’t have to be so careful with me.

Then again, I wasn’t going to complain about the fact that he did. Nor was I going to complain about how he took off my clothes or got into the shower with me. I definitely wasn’t going to complain that he washed me, as he sometimes did, with a puffy, exfoliating sponge (in his favorite color: kelly green) that foamed up with eucalyptus and mint body wash (meant to restore, calm, and relax).

He turned me around and scrubbed me from the nape of my neck, down my back, around my hips and ass, all around me legs, and even the bottoms of my feet. The scent of the leafy astringent floated by my nose and settled in the ducts at the corner of each eye. His knee bent in mine, which meant I was supposed to hand him my foot, which I did, and remained there, gawky and uneven, as he scrubbed slowly so as not to tickle me. He rinsed me carefully so I wouldn’t slide on any soapy residue after he released my foot so that I could stand on it again.

The way he stood with his hips against my hips kept me from turning around. He pressed in and, in my ear, just loud enough for me to have heard him over the spray of water, he told me, “I want this tonight. Can we?”

We’d never done that.

Not with him in me.

So far, it had always been the other way.

“Is it too much?” he asked. “I mean, with what happened earlier and everything. I don’t want to…”

“It’s not.”

I took the sponge, added more body wash so that I could do for him what he had already done for me. He looked worried like he wanted to take it back. Though, he really didn’t regret what he had asked, just the timing of when he asked it. I would have said yes forever ago.

“I want to, Danny.”

“But the only time you did…and with the conversation earlier…shit. I’m sorry I brought it up.”

I keep forgetting that I told him about that. I hadn’t told anyone else. Well, I hadn’t told them freely. There was that one time under duress and it happened to coincide with the worst panic attack I ever had.

I’ve never seen a good description of what one feels like. The clinical ones advise someone standing by of what signs to look out for. But it doesn’t tell someone how it felt for me. Like how my essence to separated from my skin. Or how the same prickly sweat arose as if you were going to vomit all while knowing that it wouldn’t be what was in my stomach that would come up but everything, including my stomach itself.

Each time I have one, I think about dying. That I was having a heart attack or a, I don’t know, something big enough to stop my body from remembering how to act normally. It was like being in a car crash. Seriously. Everything seems fine. Everything is working. Then all of a sudden - trauma. And there’s nothing to do but feel helpless.

The weird thing was — and I genuinely didn’t understand this at all — recalling the circumstances that I had already lived through and survived was worse than actually going through them the first time. I’ve thought and thought and thought about it and could not figure out why.

That said, I know why it was okay now. It was because, with Danny, I was never reliving something, it was always creating something new. He’s never let me down. Not in the —

“Hey, Danny. Do you know what today is?”

His eyes were closed and his head relaxed, tilted to his right side. “No, what day is today?”

Then his eyes flew open, “Oh my god. It’s not your birthday, is it? What’s today?”

“You know when my birthday is. It’s not my birthday.”

He took a deep breath and squinted his eyes like he could see my thoughts if he tried hard enough. “Um. Valentine’s was last week…”

“Yeah.”

“I have no idea.”

“Actually, it might have been last Saturday. For the sake of argument, though, it might as well be tonight…”

He raised his eyebrows expectantly and ignored the stream of teeny bubbles dripping down his nose, which I wiped off with my clean, wet fingers. “I’ve been coming to the coffee shop for two years. So, I think we can kind of say that we’ve known each other for two years. Or, like, since we hadn’t been introduced yet, we were made known to each other two years ago.”

“I don’t know, Micah. Isn’t that going a bit far?”

“Oh, come on! It’s got to mean something. Like what if I went to a different coffee shop and there was a cute guy named…I don’t know…Jimmy who was working the counter? And then because he was my eye candy instead of you, I would have gone back there. I may never have come here. Did you think of that? We might never have met.”

“Hm. That sounds serious,” he said, he grinned, and he leaned back to rinse himself off.

I stuck my bottom lip out, just a little, just enough to show I wasn’t _that_ upset about how he dissed on this anniversary, “You would have missed out on so much without me.”

“Oh, my god. I would have.” He said sarcastically, empathically, amused, and he reached around, shut off the water, and stood there dripping, his eyes slightly red, his hair pushed back at all angles, his hands having slid back into place, one on each cheek of my ass.

“So…it’s important,” I insisted. I would have gone on about it had my mouth not been so instantly full of his tongue. He hummed in response. I didn’t know what it was he was trying to say but it made my lips vibrate, which tickled, and made me say in my head, _I love you, Danny_.

It was almost always in my head because out loud, it seemed to mean less.

“Hey, Danny?”

He was towel drying his hair so that parts of it stuck out. It was always his face first, his hair next, then his front from his neck down the center bit, down the right leg and then the left, then his arms to follow, and finally he threw the towel across his shoulders like a cape to dry the rest of him. He always — even if he was going to hang the towel on the rack a second later — ended by wrapping the towel around his hips with the twisty bit just below his left pelvic bone.

We made fun of each other because I always dried myself from the bottom up. Catching the drips as they happened simply made more sense. We agreed to disagree and it didn’t matter because, in the end, we got to watch each other dry off.

“What, baby,” Not a question. He listened. He ambled over. He took my towel and hung it up for me. But he didn’t need me to answer anything, even if it was just him asking something because I did.

But I did have something. Maybe it was just the right night for it because maybe he and I met around two years ago but there was something else that happened right before that.

I was shopping at some fancy department store. The one we couldn’t afford. Well, there were a lot of them that we couldn’t afford but this was _the_ one that I would have wanted to afford if we could have.

Anyway, I found it. I flicked the hangers back and forth to see if there was something similar. I didn’t really need to know if there were other variations, though. I’d never seen anything like it. It. Was. Perfect. And it slipped from the hanger and into my bag.

I have only put it on a handful of times and never in front of someone else. It frightened me a little and I didn’t know what it meant. Once it was on, it looked and fit exactly as it should have. But the thing that scared me was that it felt better than I ever imagined it would.

I wanted Danny to like it. Love it. Get turned on by it. Be seduced by it or whatever. “Can I show you something?”

“Anything.”

“I’ll go get it, ‘kay?”

“Sure.”

He was supposed to stay where he was but he followed the few steps it took to get to my bedroom. AKA the place my stuff slept when I slept with him in his room.

I made a twirly move with my finger. “Turn around,” I told him. He rolled his eyes and kept them on me while the rest of him turned toward the door and tried to be smooth by looking over his shoulder or under his arm to get a peek of what I was doing.

I was so nervous that I could hear my heart beating from inside my head. It was louder than the friction the wood made against its slide when I pulled out the third drawer and reached to get something wrapped in tissue paper on the bottom of a stack of shirts at its rear left corner. The price tag was still on it. God, I can’t believe how much it cost. Would have cost. If I bought it.

I still amazed that I didn’t get caught.

The tissue paper unfurled on its own to reveal the square of fabric that I have folded and unfolded so many times that I’ve lost count. The label says it’s made of silk chiffon and on the website — it took a while for me to find it — they said the color was blush. To me it was like if someone took my skin and mixed in more pink, and then tinted it with bits of brown and gray and something metallic and shimmery, like bronze, they’d get this color. Aside from a baby bunny, this was the softest thing I’d ever touched.

“Oh my god, Micah. You have to put it on.” He said it with reverence. Lord knows how long I was standing there caressing the thing. Danny got the scissors from a can on the makeshift desk I had put together some time ago and he did the thing I hadn’t been able to make myself do. He cut the tag off. Not the label with the information on it. The tag with the price on it. “What?” He said and looked at me with surprise, “You aren’t going to return it, are you?”

I shook my head no.

He kissed my shoulder and told me again, “Put it on. I want to see you in it.”

“I will, I will. Just…”

“Just what?”

“Go in the other room. I’ll be right there.”

Putting it on was like letting a cloud slide over my shoulders and down my body. It hid nothing. Just a slip that was barely, barely there and made of magic and silk chiffon.

It wasn’t all one color, though. The straps were black and the top and bottom were lined with lace, though it would be better to call it netting. Fine, detailed netting with stripes of dark in between almost invisible bits and tiny, matte black pearls along details that traced the very edge. Even if it hadn’t been stolen, its possession was illicit.

There were ten steps and two light switches to flick off before I was back in Danny’s room. He kneeled on the sheets of the close side of the bed where he’d already peeled back the covers.

“Let me look at you,” he said with his arms reached out. An invitation to come closer. I didn’t resist. I’ve wanted to be there for hours; ever since he stood in front of me along the brick wall of the hidden patio of his coffee shop.

His thumbs found their way to my nipples and pressed in stereo. “That’s so hot,” he breathed into my ear.

Is it? It was for me. But for him? I can’t quite believe it and the butterflies, there were so many in my stomach and chest and throat that they could have choked me.

But they didn’t.

“Look, baby,” Danny said quietly, his voice registered lower than usual, his hands traveled down. One cupped my balls and the other along the growing circle of wet barely seen on the sheer fabric. He groaned, “Oh god. You’re dripping.”

“You like it?” The part of me that was incredulous was slowly overpowered by the part of me that trusted my own senses. He was into this. Really into it.

His eyes swept over me, as did his hands. “I fucking love it,” he said and ended the sentence with his tongue back in my mouth where it was way too long ago and should have been for all this time. “You made me so hard earlier. I’ve had a boner for hours. Like it totally hurts right now.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled into the few spaces of air available to me.

“No, you aren’t,” he grumbled and took my mouth again. I wasn’t complaining. Danny’s size belied his strength and the fact that he was innately, unapologetically physical. Soon after I’d met him, and learned of some of his preferences, I had this weird expectation that he’d want me to be the one to drive. And he was good with that when it happened. But he had no issue — and I mean no issue — for taking over, whether he was smaller than me or not, whether who was doing whatever to the other.

Most pleasurable life lesson ever.

All to say that Danny was always assertive, sometimes aggressive, and tonight he’d reached a brand new level: Too controlled to be desperate, too urgent to be precise. From his kneeling position, he picked me up and threw me on the bed. As in, up in the air and, like, airborne. I was still bouncing off the bed when he climbed over me and pinned me with his entire body.

In contrast to earlier this evening, this was like the inverse of being overwhelmed. The antidote, maybe. Or the inverse, as in being in this super flow of abundance and being engulfed in it but unburied by it in a totally perfect and not overwhelming way.

And this thing I was wearing was crazy. Skin-on-skin-on-skin with this slinky layer between us. He moved the fabric which moved on me and I also felt him the first time. Everything was double-double. Doubly caressed, doubly kissed. And when he moved or I moved and the hem or the strap moved it was like another set of fingers showed up from nowhere.

“Turn over,” he said, the words stretched and breathy. I flipped to my stomach with that buzzed feeling that comes going up a roller coaster and being excited but also mentally saying _oh shit, here we go_ and it’s scary but that in no way stops me from wanting it.

He started on my back. Does he know about my back? Yes. In spades. How knows all about how my thing isn’t just my neck but all the way down my spine like a zipper. Anything could be going on around me — earthquake, performance art, making chocolate chip cookies — and if Danny was at my back doing whatever it is that he knew to be doing, there was only one thing I was paying attention to and it wasn’t on whatever was happening around me.

That whole not stopping with my back thing would have been a great cover while he prepped me and stretched me and worked me…but instead, it just acted like a freaking accelerant or something.

I. Was. On. Fire.

And I almost exploded the second he was in me. That I didn’t was the eighth miracle of the modern world, I swear it.

And I needed. I needed. I needed…nothing, maybe? Maybe I had all I needed? I didn’t know because I couldn’t think of anything other than why did we wait so long to switch things up? No, that thought wasn’t even going through my head. Not coherently, anyway. I didn’t even think I was so coherent as to desire one way or the other whether I wanted him to go deeper or faster or slower or differently. Just that he was there, with me, in me, with this growing heat and friction and tension that made my blood vessels want to burst open.

Danny hiked me up onto my knees and pressed between my shoulder blades so my back was arched. Okay. This was different. Ngh. There is probably no way in all of human history to feel more vulnerable than to be naked, ass up and having a man plowing into you.

But it was also so good.

Hair pulling good.

Lip biting good.

He came first and, I think he knew I wasn’t far behind since stayed in me and he reached around, played with my balls and pressed up against me in little circles while I continued to jerk myself off. And when I did, my orgasm traveled from my toes to the top of my head and looped back around while some cosmic switch opened up the bed so that I could fall through it.

We topped over together, totally spent. He made a move to get something to clean us up but I stopped him. I wanted to feel more of the after effects or maybe I wasn’t ready to wipe him away. Minutes later, he slipped away and did it anyway. “Baby, we need to figure out how to get cum stains out of your slip,” he said, looking distraught on my behalf.

Oh. Damn. I didn’t think about that. “Tomorrow,” I murmured. Half asleep.

He wasn’t having it. Next, I knew the slip was peeled off me gingerly and it walked off in Danny’s hands into the other room where, moments later, I heard some water splashing and Danny’s voice softly rumbling through the shared wall as he took care of my stuff like he’s done so many times before.

Then he came back, cleaned me up, dried me off, crawled in next to me, and tucked one arm under my neck as part of wrapping his arms and legs around me. Why was I so worried to show him another part of myself when every next step off a cliff we’ve taken with each other has resulted in the earth itself jutting up to meet us?

“Was that okay?” he asked, close enough so that I could feel his breath on my chest.

I answered him, “More than.” What I meant to do next was to kiss him goodnight. But the one kiss turned into another, and soon I was making love to him. We drifted in and out of sleep. We drifted in and out of each other. For a night, and for the entire night, there were no boundaries between us, and we forged a bond that neither of us was ever able to explain or even understand.

It would have been impossible to stay that close forever. Neither of us would have been able to stand it. That said, once the memory was put in place, neither of us could forget it either. And from that moment on, whatever happened to us, whatever brought us closer together or further apart, there would always be us: me and Danny.


End file.
